Loebner Prize

The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously holds textual conversations with a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the responses, the judge must decide which is which.

Within the field of artificial intelligence, the Loebner Prize is somewhat controversial; the most prominent critic, Marvin Minsky, has called it a publicity stunt that does not help the field along.[1]

In addition, the former time limit of 5 minutes and the use of untrained and unsophisticated judges has resulted in some wins that may be due to trickery rather than to plausible intelligence.[citation needed]

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Originally, $2,000 was awarded for the most human-seeming chatterbot in the competition. The prize was $3,000 in 2005 and $2,250 in 2006. In 2008, $3,000 was awarded.

In addition, there are two one-time-only prizes that have never been awarded. $25,000 is offered for the first chatterbot that judges cannot distinguish from a real human and which can convince judges that the human is the computer program. $100,000 is the reward for the first chatterbot that judges cannot distinguish from a real human in a Turing test that includes deciphering and understanding text, visual, and auditory input. Once this is achieved, the annual competition will end.

The rules have varied over the years and early competitions featured restricted conversation Turing tests but since 1995 the discussion has been unrestricted.[2]

For the three entries in 2007, Robert Medeksza, Noah Duncan and Rollo Carpenter,[3] some basic "screening questions" were used by the sponsor to evaluate the state of the technology. These included simple questions about the time, what round of the contest it is, etc.; general knowledge ("What is a hammer for?"); comparisons ("Which is faster, a train or a plane?"); and questions demonstrating memory for preceding parts of the same conversation. "All nouns, adjectives and verbs will come from a dictionary suitable for children or adolescents under the age of 12." Entries did not need to respond "intelligently" to the questions to be accepted.

For the first time in 2008 the sponsor allowed introduction of a preliminary phase to the contest opening up the competition to previously disallowed web-based entries judged by a variety of invited interrogators. The available rules do not state how interrogators are selected or instructed. Interrogators (who judge the systems) have limited time: 5 minutes per entity in the 2003 competition, 20+ per pair in 2004–2007 competitions, 5 minutes to conduct simultaneous conversations with a human and the program in 2008-2009, increased to 25 minutes of simultaneous conversation since 2010.

In 2006, the contest was organised by Tim Child (CEO of Televirtual) and Huma Shah.[4][5] On August 30, the four finalists were announced:

Rollo Carpenter

Richard Churchill and Marie-Claire Jenkins

Noah Duncan

Robert Medeksza

The contest was held on 17 September in the VR theatre, Torrington Place campus of University College London. The judges included the University of Reading's cybernetics professor, Kevin Warwick, a professor of artificial intelligence, John Barnden (specialist in metaphor research at the University of Birmingham), a barrister, Victoria Butler-Cole and a journalist, Graham Duncan-Rowe. The latter's experience of the event can be found in an article in Technology Review.[6][7] The winner was 'Joan', based on Jabberwacky, both created by Rollo Carpenter.

The 2007 competition was held on October 21 in New York City. The judges were: computer science professor Russ Abbott, philosophy professor Hartry Field, psychology assistant professor Clayton Curtis and English lecturer Scott Hutchins.[8]

No bot passed the Turing test, but the judges ranked the three contestants as follows:

The 2008 competition was organised by professor Kevin Warwick, coordinated by Huma Shah and held on October 12 at the University of Reading, UK.[9] After testing by over one hundred judges during the preliminary phase, in June and July 2008, six finalists were selected from thirteen original entrants - artificial conversational entity (ACE). Five of those invited competed in the finals:

In the finals, each of the judges was given five minutes to conduct simultaneous, split-screen conversations with two hidden entities. Elbot[10] of Artificial Solutions[11] won the 2008 Loebner Prize bronze award, for most human-like artificial conversational entity, through fooling three of the twelve judges who interrogated it (in the human-parallel comparisons) into believing it was human. This is coming very close to the 30% traditionally required to consider that a program has actually passed the Turing test. Eugene Goostman[12] and Ultra Hal[13] both deceived one judge each that it was the human.

Will Pavia, a journalist for The Times, has written about his experience; a Loebner finals' judge, he was deceived by Elbot and Eugene.[14] Kevin Warwick and Huma Shah have reported on the parallel-paired Turing tests.[15]

The 2011 Loebner Prize Competition was held on October 19 at the University of Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom. The prize amount for 2011 was $4,000.

The four finalists and their chatterbots were Bruce Wilcox (Rosette), Adeena Mignogna (Zoe), Mohan Embar (Chip Vivant) and Ron Lee (Tutor), who finished in that order.

That year there was an addition of a panel of junior judges, namely Jean-Paul Astal-Stain, William Dunne, Sam Keat and Kirill Jerdev. The results of the junior contest were markedly different from the main contest, with chatterbots Tutor and Zoe tying for first place and Chip Vivant and Rosette coming in third and fourth place, respectively.

The 2012 Loebner Prize Competition was held on the 15th of May in Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England, in honor of the Alan Turing centenary celebrations. The prize amount for 2012 was $5,000. The local arrangements organizer was David Levy, who won the Loebner Prize in 1997 and 2009.

The four finalists and their chatterbots were Mohan Embar (Chip Vivant), Bruce Wilcox (Angela), Daniel Burke (Adam), M. Allan (Linguo), who finished in that order.

That year, a team from the University of Exeter's computer science department (Ed Keedwell, Max Dupenois and Kent McClymont) conducted the first-ever live webcast of the conversations.[16]

The 2014 Loebner Prize Competition was held at Bletchley Park, England, on Saturday 15th November 2014. The event was filmed live by Sky News. The guest judge was television presenter and broadcaster James May.

After 2 hours of judging, 'Rose' by Bruce Wilcox was declared the winner. Bruce will receive a cheque for $4000 and a bronze medal. The ranks were as follows:

The Judges were Dr Ian Hocking, Writer & Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Christ Church College, Canterbury; Dr Ghita Kouadri-Mostefaoui, Lecturer in Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire; Mr James May, Television Presenter and Broadcaster; and Dr Paul Sant, Dean of UCMK, University of Bedfordshire.